


The Beginning of the End

by deathishauntedbyhumans



Series: Radiation Funland [1]
Category: GURPS, Original Work
Genre: Angst, Apocalypse, Backstory, Cryogenics, End of the World, Gen, Genetic Engineering, Genetic Testing, Government Experimentation, Human Experimentation, Human Testing, POV First Person, Science is Bad Kids, Unethical Experimentation, Vague descriptions of violence, Wordcount: 1.000-3.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-20
Updated: 2018-06-20
Packaged: 2019-05-25 19:37:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14984129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathishauntedbyhumans/pseuds/deathishauntedbyhumans
Summary: Dez is a genetic experiment, a technopath created to be a weapon. When he refuses, he is locked away. All hope seems lost, until the end of the world is suddenly upon him, and he is cryogenically frozen by another project in the lab, in the hope that he will survive the apocalypse and emerge unharmed into a better life.





	The Beginning of the End

**Author's Note:**

> I have a bunch written for Dez and co, so I figured I might as well post them because apparently, I hadn't before.

They took me when I was five years old. Or maybe six. To this day, I’m not exactly sure how old I am. After all, it wasn’t like they celebrated birthdays down there. Hooray, you’re another year older, which means you’ve got an improved tolerance to our blasted experiments!

Yeah, right. 

Never was quite sure what was going on, when I think back on it. There are flashes of colour, of movement. There are blurs of white and grey and the occasional darker streak of some nameless, faceless man’s hair as they tried to turn me inside out and back again without actually killing me. 

You learned quickly to keep your mouth shut. There were only more consequences if you couldn’t. 

I was somewhere in my teens when they finally cracked the code. Or at least, I assume that’s what happened, because suddenly I could control technology and I could override the locks that hummed with energy beneath my palms and they had to put me in solitary so that I wouldn’t get out and start beating my guards with whatever blunt object I could find. 

Concrete walls really get to a person, after awhile, you know that? 

Years had passed when they finally brought me out again. They’d ignored me for a long time, long enough that I thought I might have lost every sense of self I’d ever held on to before those fateful days. They didn’t like it when I attacked them. I was a broken man, yes, but that didn’t mean that  _ they  _ had broken me. 

Lan was my only companion. They stuck him in solitary with me after I refused to cooperate and they had to lock me up again. He was a man… or at least, he  _ had  _ been, before they’d gotten to him. 

I’ll admit, I was terrified of him at first. I thought he was going to kill me. It was only after I realised that he was slowly killing himself that I was able to speak to him at all. He never ate, never drank. As though those things would be enough to stop the thing he had become.

I can still remember his voice. It was rough and grating on the ears. It was a voice raw from screaming, with every word ripped from a throat that would never heal from screaming. His skin was leathery and tough, impenetrable to blunt objects and to sharp ones. He could deflect bullets, he told me once, showing me the dents in his hide where they’d shot at him. I didn’t doubt that they had done it. He was a monster. 

Lan and I were the only ones left alive when the projects were abandoned. Never would have known they’d been abandoned, either, except for the food stopped coming. Now, it was meager to begin with, but if they’d wanted to kill us off, there were easier ways. Lan nearly killed himself shoving at that concrete wall. It was thick, thick enough that we couldn’t hear the screams from above when the other projects were tested. He eventually managed to get through some of the concrete near the door, and I found the connection to override the doors. They all slid open at once, it seemed, and suddenly we were out in the middle of the facility. I don’t remember how we got there. It was dead silent. Lan looked grim. 

The projects that hadn’t been taken when the scientists left were all dead. Every last one of them. I don’t remember looking, but I remember Lan saying it in his quiet voice, the voice that he'd come into once he'd stopped screaming himself raw when we shared a cell. There were radios around the facility, and I managed to get one working. Panic came from every station. The words were a blur, but I remember Lan’s face swimming somewhere in front of my own, telling me to get a grip, that I needed to focus. And then his hands were guiding mine against a smooth surface and his voice pierced the haze I had fallen into and told me to do my thing so I did, and then I was so tired because I didn’t know what I had done, and I had never done so much at one time, and Lan was guiding me somewhere. I remember his face in front of mine, saying goodbye. Saying good luck. 

I don’t remember going to sleep. 

  
  
  


But I remember waking up. 

The facility as I remembered it was no more. There were vines growing through the floors, through the walls, and everything looked cracked and broken. I was sure I was still asleep, until I tried to move, only to find that I couldn’t. Struggling was the only thing I could do. It took me too long to remember my abilities, my brain too foggy to think straight. 

Sometimes I think that fog is the only thing left in my brain. 

Finally, placing my hands against the surface in front of me, I could feel a thrum of what had obviously used to be some sort of energy underneath my fingertips. It had lied dormant for a long time, and it took quite a bit of energy of my own, but I managed to shift the door enough for me to quite literally fall out of the tube. I laid on the floor for what felt like hours, catching my breath. 

Cryogenic technology had been one of the pet projects of the lab workers. It was something they were constantly talking about: how they could improve it, what they could do, how perfect it already seemed. None of the human genetics projects were as good as the freezing people projects, it seemed. So I recognised the cryo-tube when I saw it. What I didn’t recognise was the world I had come to live in. 

Stumbling somewhat blindly through the crumbling remains of the facility, I came across dusty bones and nothing more than that. Musty air permeated several of the rooms I passed through, and it was near dark by the time I reached the surface. I slept fitfully, hidden away in an alcove. In the morning, I began to traverse what I had would come to know as The Wasteland. Through the trees I went, tripping over rocks and branches and attempting to avoid anything I might come into contact with. The woods were remarkably quiet, but there was an energy thrumming that I knew nothing about. Technology did not thrive here, that much I could tell. This energy was volatile and dangerous, and I wanted nothing to do with it. The next week passed much the same, finding spaces up against trees to sleep fitfully against at night and waking with the filtered light to continue walking. Where I was going, I was unsure. I just knew that at some point, if I kept going, I would find  _ something _ . 

And then, I met the clown. 

**Author's Note:**

> Lan and Dez are mine.   
> The clown belongs to @mushygreens on tumblr. 
> 
> Kudos/comments are love. Come scream at me on tumblr @deathishauntedbyhumans


End file.
